


Seventy-Two

by rosekay



Series: Go West, Young Man [2]
Category: Supernatural, Xī yóu jì | Journey to the West - Wú Cheng'en
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Dominance, Jealousy, M/M, Misadventures involving spiders, Sam is ever stubborn, Season/Series 02, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-07
Updated: 2007-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:32:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam learns control.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seventy-Two

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in 2007.

"He'll let you fuck him, you know."

Sam managed to choke down his beer before it slopped down his shirt. He looked disbelievingly at where Dai had arranged herself in an artful sprawl across the lounge seat.

"E-excuse me?"

"Dean," she straightened, her legs spread distractingly, elbows on thighs as she grinned at Sam. "Fuck him."

Sam could feel the glow coming off his skin as he gripped his beer, hands suddenly cold and something hot in the pit of his stomach. He carefully avoided Dai's black eyes.

"Are you - weren't you - ?" he stumbled to a halt under the slow curl of her smile.

This close, her skin seemed to sheen with texture - scales, a golden inlay over the smoothness of her face and arms. Her teeth were round and pearly now, but sometimes he could almost see double, the arching bite of fangs and sharp flashes of white.

The tilted dark eyes seemed to suggest elegance, the bearing of a princess, but really, when she wasn't a car, she spent her time drinking like a fish, listening to awful music, and being a general nuisance.

It was little wonder she and Dean were attached at the hip. They might has well have been the same person sometimes. Except neither of them fit into the category of "person," not neatly anyway.

Sam waited nervously for her response, but she seemed content to let the moment drag on agonizingly, clearly happy to watch him squirm. He put his mostly drained beer on the table with a clatter, and made to get up, the flush still in his cheeks, and finally she laughed, sharp and low.

"We've never been exclusive," she took the opportunity to steal the rest of his beer. "Too much alike, you know? It's like fucking myself."

Sam, caught halfway between rising and sitting, crouched awkwardly in his new position, waiting for her to finish.

Dai took her sweet time in licking the rim of the bottle in a way so completely obscene she had half the bar staring their way by the time she was done. Sam sat down with a sigh. He vaguely remembered the goddess saying something about keeping a low profile on their journey. So much for that. With the company he kept these days, he could only chalk it down to a divine test of patience and fortitude.

"Which is why _you_ have to make the first move." Now she was leaning back again, one leg up on the couch, a satisfied expression settling across her sharp features. Dai always made Sam want to finger his prayer beads, but he wasn't about to give her that small victory.

He settled for an articulate _huh?_ , years of training slipping away at the first roll of her eyes.

"There's a _way_ with Dean, Sam. He'll bitch and he'll bitch and he'll bitch, but he likes to be led." She grinned, and even that innocent gesture managed to seem quite obscene when she curled out her tongue, slick and suggestive, one moist swipe over the ripe bud of her lips. "He likes you, I can tell, shows you his belly all the time, even if _you_ can't tell."

Sam stared at her dumbly. "I'm a man of the temple," he managed finally.

Dai rolled her eyes at that. "Oh please, who do think conned me into being a _car_ for punishment? Trust me, Sam, the goddess won't even blink. You're going west, you idiot. You won't lose Paradise for this."

She slammed the empty bottle down on the table with a sharp rap that had Sam half out of his seat again.

"All this talk about that horndog is making me twitchy, and I have to be transportation in a couple hours. I heard they've got vibrating beds upstairs." She trailed one hand across her thighs, slow and sure, until Sam had to avert his eyes or maybe combust with shame.

“Got a quarter?”

Sam hoped his glare conveyed everything it needed to, but Dai only laughed, low and warm.

"Catch you later, monk."

He allowed himself a sigh of relief as her footsteps started to leave off, but Dai, being Dai, couldn't allow him even that. She had to have the last word, and he thought very quietly that this was the final proof she and Dean really _did_ share a brain somewhere in there.

"One more thing, Sam." She cut her gaze to the window, where Dean was already approaching the building, with his familiar rolling gait and worn jeans. "Loyalty's his worst trait, and there'll be no getting rid of him now. I would take advantage if I were you."

I would ne-

The words were half on his tongue, but she was already gone, up the stairs, to her room and the, his thoughts halted for a moment, the vibrating bed.

Sam remembered thinking Dean and a psychic connection with his car that was maybe a little bit _wrong_ before he knew Dai was Dai. Did they really tell each other everything?

It was too late to think on it because Dean was already inside, sidling in just a little too close next to Sam.

"How's it hanging, holy man?"

His eyes seemed to direct themselves to Dean's lips, a little chapped but still full, his lashes, spiking shadows over his cheeks, then the broad line of his shoulders and down, down, down to the splayed thighs, straining the white worn denim, and carefully, manically avoiding what lay between them.

His head was spinning, and he'd have prayed for it to be the beer, except he'd had only one and it seemed an improper thing to ask for.

"Sam?"

Dean cocked his head, a half smile. Sam thought about where they were going tomorrow, another town, to investigate, to investigate, and now his thoughts were stumbling, to investigate something he would look up tonight.

"You, ok?"

Rough, half sleepy voice there as Dean settled back into the seat, his shirt lifting up to lay bare a strip of pale skin above his jeans, entire body spread open right in front of Sam.

 _Shows his belly to you_. Dai's words were ringing in his head like a demented, very much perverted mantra, and he had to jerk his jaw from side to side for it to subside.

"I - I - have to go."

He stood up so quickly he nearly knocked the table over. Cringing, he steadied it with one hand, and tried to avoid Dean's faintly concerned gaze.

"Hey, seriously, you ok? You look sick."

Do I? Sam barely resisted the urge to lay a hand to his burning cheek like the worst schoolgirl.

"Fine, I'm fine," then he was up the stairs, hoping the buzzing sound heard down the hall was not in fact Dai and her vibrating bed.

*

Now Dai smirked at him from every corner, and Sam became uncomfortably aware of Dean's every move.

He had a voracious love for women, from the bar girls who cooed over him to the demons he killed with apparent relish. Sam could easily imagine him moving against Dai, broad shoulders and strong hips, her legs flexing around him, dark eyes trained on Sam. Dean would grunt and thrust, holding her tight, bite her tattoos and make her keen. 

To say that Dean didn't like men was to say that he didn't quite drape himself all over them. He smiled and flirted and bared himself all the same.

They had more than one run in with police who probably had no ears for the mitigating factor of a divine journey when it came to property destruction (Ash would blush, shrug and duck his head when Sam gave him a pointed look).

He watched Dean smile when they slammed him up against walls, smirk as a burly officer gave him a rough pat down, eye handcuffs like they were merely new toys with which to play, and considering Dean's facility with lock picks, Sam guessed that was an accurate enough description.

Mobile face and eyes that glinted bright and dark from beneath his lashes, walking temptation.

Sam had only to look at him before he needed to meditate. 

He reminded himself carefully that cursing Dai wasn't conducive to a peaceful mental state either.

Ash was almost as bad, constantly inventing new weapons, new networks, and perfectly happy to pick up Dean's sloppy seconds when they hit bars together. Dean called him "Dr. Badass" when they got roaring drunk and reminisced about the stuffed shirts Above, and how much better it was down here in the muck anyway. Sam thought though, that there were different colors of sad and bitter in their eyes when they did this.

Only Jess stood by his side, boisterous as the rest when she wanted, but with a stillness he’d yet to see in any of them.

She’d learned not to hide behind her curtain of golden hair, but her mouth still tightened when children ran from her face.

All of them moved through the world with a weary sort of grace that chafed with Sam. Never a breath of faith between them, only Dean’s mockery and Jess’ withdrawal.

It was in his nature to trust. This was not his first life, and he doubted that it would be his last. He knew with at least half a mind that all their troubles were tests, and that the divine would win out in the end, however circuitous a route it chose.

*

The house looked lonely in the woods, but well furnished and lit, with creeping ivy to give it a sense of dignity, and a warm glow that flew out from its windows, cutting the dense shadow of the trees like gold.

Dean practically chewed his cigarette with anxiety.

“Don’t like it.”

Ash gave a sharp nod to show he agreed, the tattoos on his arms seeming to twitch and spring with their master’s own unsteadiness.

Sam looked to Jess, her half face and clear eyes, and received only a quiet look. He was left to decipher it on his own. She wouldn’t give him more than that.

The world wasn’t as it had been, but there were still rules, courtesies. That, and they’d run out of food miles back. Dean seeming to burn on his own nervous energy, Ash ready to climb out of his skin, and Jess tilting her head up as if to drain the water from the sky.

“It can’t hurt,” he said slowly.

The hand on his shoulder was firm, Dean’s warmth bleeding from his fingers straight through the thin material of Sam’s shirt. He glowed with the heat and shivered at the smoky leather smell of Dean this close.

“Don’t like it.”

There was a familiar mulish expression on that face, brows drawn down and a tic beneath his right eye.

Sam tried to move past him, the warmth of the house inviting. Dean just side stepped with him, a solid shoulder blocking his path, cigarette dangling from his lower lip and eyes snapping.

Sam had always had trouble with humility as a virtue. His height was an irritation at best, and a liability at worst, always making him stand out when all he wanted to do was blend back in, but now, he was glad for it.

Even when Dean’s eyes flashed a dangerous gold at him, he took comfort in looking down at the belligerent mouth and mussed hair, throwing his own shoulders back.

Dean didn’t back down, possibly because he rarely did, just stood his ground, energy seeming to crackle around him.

Sam could see it in his narrowed eyes and wide legged stance, that it was almost for the principle of the matter rather than any real fear of danger. Dean seemed to be an expert in needling Sam, and he was doing a damn good job here.

“Dean, step aside,” he said, voice tight. He had to tell himself, patience, and think of the beads wound around one hand, the sutras to the west.

No response, just arms that crossed even further, stretching Dean’s gray shirt that hung just a little too large on him.

Sam could see Ash and Jess watching the two of them out of the corner of his eye, and knew he couldn’t back down now. The goddess had called them his disciples, had told him it wouldn’t be easy.

He hadn’t liked being a novice himself, longing for more responsibility, a clearer path to enlightenment and salvation. He knew that ambition was not always an appropriate virtue, and should never have been the root of his hard work and good behavior, but it’d been something he couldn’t help.

He wanted his journey (and now he had it, however dangerous), and his own students (and here they were, recalcitrant and endlessly disrespectful.)

If he let Dean win now, he would never hear the end of it.

“ _Dean._ ”

He lowered his voice, a sutra rolling through his head, tried to put the weight of divine authority into it. He was pleased to see Dean’s eyes widen a little at the growling depth that Sam had achieved, the bite of the holy in the sound of his own name. But the smile must have slipped, because Dean only bristled closer to him, until they were practically nose to nose, Dean straining to match him.

“Listen, you asshole. I _said_ I don’t. Like. It. We should keep moving, find some place else.”

This wasn’t smiling, cajoling Dean, who let his shirts ride up and jeans strain against his legs, smirking and smiling and putting on a show for anyone who would take him up on it. There was steel here, not in the golden glint of his eyes, but in the very human nature of his posture, a pride that Sam recognized.

Briefly, he wondered whose disciple Dean had been five centuries ago, before Sam, before Heaven, when he’d been all but newborn stone.

Dai had materialized in her human form when he’d been staring at Dean, and the flick of her dark hair drew his eye again. She smirked, and Sam remembered, _he likes to be led._

He relaxed his own spine, and watched Dean’s wary eyes as he drew up a hand, curled it intimate and sure around the hot skin of Dean’s neck, tangling in the short bristles of his hair.

“Let me go inside, Dean. I’m a holy man. They’re bound by hospitality to give us some food.”

Dean shivered a little beneath his hand, not noticeable to the eye, but Sam felt it through his fingers, saw the sudden raw hunger in the clear green eyes, the quick flick of lashes against freckled cheeks.

He had to swallow so the heat in his belly wouldn't overwhelm him. 

“Fine,” Dean’s voice was gruff when it finally emerged, and there was nothing soft about the set of his jaw or his posture, only the tiny spark of acquiescence, of want, that Sam had spotted in his eyes. “Your suicide.”

“Oh thank god.”

Sam laughed as Ash made a run for the house, the sound of his stomach growling nearly audible now without the tension clouding the air.

*

Sam had learned to make Dean bend for his words, but he hadn’t learned how to be right.

There were seven sisters who lived in the house, dark-eyed and pious, the soft black of their hair drawn to one side, soft wings over their ears.

They’d murmured in pleasure at the sight of the prayer beads and his careful bow at the door, welcomed him right in.

Sam had been a little embarrassed watching Ash tear his way through the simple meal that they set out, but there wasn’t much he could say, and the sisters didn’t seem to mind. They all stared at him with something like indulgence in their eyes.

Jess drank her water, eating quietly and quickly, while Dean barely picked at his food, eyes still wary, and always, always cutting to Sam, the heat unabated, the distrust and worry still fresh from their face off in the woods.

Now, strung up with one sister’s claws skittering dangerously across his scalp and another intent on removing his jeans, he thought that maybe, maybe it hadn’t been Dean’s prides out in the woods, but Sam's. 

The oldest sister, who had welcomed them into the house, didn’t look so pious now, black lines arching out from her eyes, now too many and something like ink at her mouth.

“Foolish monk,” she said, softly, with a sibilant rasp that went _shushshush_ with the cadence of her words.

He gasped as his legs were laid bare to the air, and finally his dick and shriveled balls, cleaving close with his own nervousness and the sudden cold of the room. Things that might have been nails or claws or both, made their way up from his ankles, pinching the soft places until he went wild with the struggling.

“Immortality,” said the sister, amused. “And not a bad package either.” She gave him the courtesy of a few seconds before her eyes traveled south. Sam blushed brighter than he would have thought possible, yanking at his bonds.

“Soft flesh,” she continued, “and white. We like soft flesh.”

The other two in the room lifted her heads at that, all three of them staring at him in eerie harmony, more than their fair share eyes between them.

One of the two between his legs got a little too eager, and he yelped at the squeeze, tears of pain in his eyes.

“The first bite is _mine_ ,” the oldest told her, eyes twitching down, and Sam saw the younger one skitter away.

She leaned closer, mouth at his throat, then his shoulder, until it was resting over his heart. It was pounding so quickly he thought she must have heard it fluttering against the skin. 

Sam swallowed, and wished for his prayer beads. He was left to say one in his head. 

“You’ll be killed for this,” he hissed, and was proud that he’d made his voice so steady.

“Oh?” She lifted her face to his, a terrible laughter curling out from her mouth. He heard the echoing hisses from her sisters on the floor.

Then her head exploded in a spray of thick black blood that coated his face and throat. Sam hacked and coughed, trying to get the bitter stuff out of his mouth, while her sisters screeched beneath him, the sound of claws and legs clattering on the floor still sending shivers up his spine.

Dean’s voice, a blessed thing to his ears now, rang out from not too far away.

“Sam, _down_!”

He tried to duck his head in the bonds as best he could, and heard the screeching hiss to a halt, the shotgun’s echo still ringing in the air.

Dean stood in the doorway, limned by the fading light, features like worked jade. He racked the gun again before stepping into the room. 

Then he was close, too close, and Sam was dizzy from the bitter that still swam in his throat, his nostrils. He wasn’t even sure if it was actually on his tongue or if the smell was just so strong he was tasting it.

Fingers on his face, working his jaw from side to side, and Dean, sweet smell of dust and sweat, refreshingly human now. He couldn’t even think about how strange the thought was.

“Sam, _Sam._ You with me?”

Dean was solid beneath him when he flopped forward, hands tingling from the cut bonds. He felt ungainly, like a puppet with its strings cut, his limbs not quite under his command. Even the fact that he was naked seemed like a vague and distant fact.

Dean’s face swam into view again, achingly familiar and Sam was just leaning forward, just a little bit, barely catching the lift of surprised eyebrows.

Dean’s lips were soft, not as soft as they looked, more chapped maybe, but warm beneath his, and there was the wet slick of tongue against his mouth. Sam moaned, leaning further into Dean’s grip.

Then the warmth was gone, and there was a hand at one armpit, holding him up, another slung around his waist.

When he looked up, Dean was staring at him, his mouth still ripe and wet, and something terrifying, maybe beautiful, in his eyes.

He opened his mouth, and Sam dizzily followed the curve of lips, lips that he’d _tasted_ , and why had he refused the first time? It seemed silly now.

It opened, beautiful thing, heavenly chorus, and then Dean said, “You goddamned gorilla. Their blood’s a drug. Sam, Sam?”

“Dean,” he started, feeling like he should take offense at something he heard, ready to rail, to argue, and then he passed out.

*

Sam was embarrassed afterwards, and Dean skittish, avoiding his eyes and finding excuses, picking up so many women even Ash couldn’t keep up with his usual leavings.

“What’s up with him?” he asked, scratching his head, ridiculous hair tangled from another girl for the third night in a row.

Jess just laughed into her beer until Ash gave up on Sam, and switched to her. 

“Dude, what’s going on?” 

Sam fumed in the car, glad the other three had wisely left him alone, until he remembered the car was the worst of them all.

_Told you._

And goddess, was she speaking in his _head_ now?

_Yeah._

Sam groaned.

 _You know, he picked up seventy two tricks from his old master, and believe me, they’re_ worth _it.”_

“Please leave me alone.”

_And he got the earthly set over the heavenly ones too. You know what that means? He can -_

“ _Dai._ ”

She was quiet for a moment, but he could feel the judgment and derision emanating from all around him. It was worse than when she just smirked and made masturbation jokes. 

_You fucked this up, Sammy._

“Don’t call me that.”

 _What, only_ he _gets to do it?_

He couldn’t even articulate an answer to that one.

*

The next bit of trouble they found themselves in wasn’t even his fault.

The three of them – Sam, Ash and Jess – did manage to escape first. They found Dean, racked with worry, before he found them.

Dean was uncharacteristically quiet all the way to the motel, a prickly sort of silence that seemed to rig the whole car.

“Ash, _please_ put on some pants,” Sam muttered before going to checkout desk.

“Don’t need ‘em,” Ash returned airily, apparently none the worse for wear after a battle with demons. It took Sam a moment to remember that Ash was one too; he just took his PBR with Doritos instead of human flesh. 

Sam waited for Dean’s silence to subside. When it didn’t, he followed him up to his room. 

“Dean?”

The amulet glinted on his chest from the low light. Sam had almost forgotten about it.

He bent down, carefully cupping Dean’s face, surprised at the red eyes. He gently swiped a finger across one cheek, licked it, tasting salt.

“Dean, have you been _crying_?”

Dean’s expression said that if Sam ever spoke of it again, they’d both be dead.

“Hey,” he tried. “We’re all right. All of us.”

He flipped up his palms for Dean to see, feeling like a child to a worried parent.

“I can’t die.”

It was so quiet he almost didn't hear, and it took him awhile to parse out the words. Sam stared at Dean’s miserable shoulders, his shadowed eyes.

“I know,” he began haltingly, “I mean, I know the story. You ate the Empress’ peaches, right?” Nine thousand years, gone in one bite.

“I ate them,” Dean said, “so they’d let me in.”

_But they never did._

The words hung heavier than Sam thought possible in the room. It was hard to swallow around them.

“I thought,” Dean tried again, “that if you – you, that well, I can’t die. It’d just be me.”

Sam didn’t need to be a holy man to sense the naked fear in his voice, even though he was turned away. It all sounded terrifyingly human. He’d learned to deal with demons, with Ash’s appetite and Jess’ strange silences, Dean’s constant litany of wine, women and angry outbursts, but this was different.

He thought about patience, virtue, reincarnation, all the rote sermons that might make this easier, but he wasn't sure Dean would listen. This was a job for a parent, a friend, a brother, not a priest too young for his task and so unlearned in the world.

Dai’s words came to him again.

_Loyalty’s his worst trait._

And Dean’s faith in her hadn’t subsided after five hundred years, had it?

“Dean,” he said, and laid his hand across Dean’s neck again, that vulnerable, pale patch of skin.

He pulled, and Dean came.

Sam’s hands were at the hem of shirt, yanking it up to feel the heat of muscle and skin, nipples that hardened beneath his fingers. He dragged Dean close, to search out all the soft spaces of him, the hollow of his hips, the damp warmth under his arms, coarse hair tickling Sam’s hands and his jaw when he nuzzled there.

Dean opened for him beautifully, head going back and hands jerking almost angrily at Sam’s clothes, giving and moving against him. His eyes, clear and green with the faint edge of gold and promise, were uncomfortably naked. 

They were both halfway out of their jeans by the time they rolled to the bed, Dean’s mouth on Sam’s, desperate, sour from worry and stale beer, his body impossibly hot, almost inhumanly so.

Sam worked his hands across the broad shoulders, traced narrow collarbone until Dean shuddered, and around his neck to unhook the catch of the amulet.

Dean froze at that, staring at him as if he’d just committed a sin, the gold sliding off his chest, over freckled skin onto the bed with a soft _plop._

“The goddess – “

“Not now,” said Sam, and he reached down to cup Dean’s naked cock, curved red and beautiful in his hand, hard against his bones and soft against his skin. 

The curve of Dean's hips was pale and veined, hidden from the sun and still splashed with faint freckles. It felt starkly soft beneath the darkness of hair, damp and rough against Sam’s hand. 

Dean gasped, falling against him, one hand bruising tight around Sam’s upper arm. He looked down to see the shadow of Dean’s lashes on his cheeks as he burrowed against Sam’s chest, hips pumping helplessly.

Sam flicked a finger over the very tip, catching the clear fluid and smearing it over his hands, working it down the length of reddened flesh as Dean swore against him, smashing their mouths together, messy, hot, teeth catching and clicking.

When at last, he couldn’t stand it, his own cock painfully hard against his belly, he guided Dean to his stomach on the bed, licked a wet trail up the bucking spine, leaned his head down to the sweet, sweaty smell at the nape of his neck, short hair tickling Sam’s nose.

“Where,” he gasped, “where – “

“My bag,” Dean muttered, hands fisting the sheets, his voice ragged.

Disciple, Sam thought, and imagined Dean’s first master, of the seventy two tricks. He wondered if Dean had bared his eyes like that for him.

But it didn’t matter, because Dean bucked against him at the first finger, swearing into the sheets, at Sam, begging for more.

The first touch of his cock to the heat of Dean’s body was almost enough to make him come, and he had go slow, slow like the patience he’d learned, and so Dean would moan for him just like he was, impossibly tight around him, skin and sweat and an inhuman growl to his voice, the amulet crushed beneath both of them.

“Will you,” gasped Sam, “will you wait for me at the cave?”

“Fuck you,” muttered as Dean ground himself into the sheets.

Then, more quietly, “Always, always,” a rough, cruel sound, and Sam came, helpless like water from the heavenly cup.

*


End file.
